Use Case - Applying to Attending a Conference

It’s funny how the same story can be both depressing and inspiring. While describing ProForma templates and forms to fellow attendees at Summit 2016, we heard horror stories about the bureaucratic hoops some people had to jump through in order to be there. One attendee told of having to complete four separate forms in order to receive all of the necessary approvals. Months later, when they thought everything was finalized, one of the forms got misplaced. They then had to go through the whole process again in order to show Finance they had approval and had followed proper procedures.

A Better Way: JIRA Service Desk

Papers get misplaced. Emails get deleted, ignored or buried in overflowing inboxes. There has to be a better way – and there is. Imagine if you could easily use JIRA Service Desk for any business process. Getting approval to attend a conference might look something like this:

An employee goes to the customer portal and selects a request type entitled "Attend a conference or professional development event."

An electronic form opens up and the employee completes it with their contact information and details about the conference. The employee submits the request.

The employee's supervisor receives a notification that there is a request needing their approval. They find the employee's completed form attached to the JSD issue and see that the conference is an appropriate event for the employee to attend. They mark the issue as approved.

Now the HR agent opens the issue, sees that all the required information has been submitted and that the supervisor has given their approval. The employee's request is then approved. HR can add their own form to the issue to record details such as the cost center that the conference fees should be charged to.

The advantages to such a process are clear. All the information is attached to the JIRA issue. There are no random forms that can get lost. The employee (or anyone associated with the issue) can check the status of the request at any time so there are no anxious or nagging phone calls asking if the process has been approved. And if someone has questions later, JIRA's issue tracking makes it easy to retrace the process.

Maybe you don’t have to fill out multiple forms to get approval to attend a conference. Maybe things are less bureaucratic at your organization. Lucky you! But chances are, there are business processes in your organization that could be made more efficient and less painful by using ProForma and JIRA Service Desk.

Here's What ProForma & JIRA Service Desk Offer

A library of all-ready created template processes (request types and their associated forms) designed for business teams across your organization (Finance, HR, IT, Legal, Operations, Procurement and Risk Management)

An intuitive form builder that allows you to easily create your own forms or customize existing forms

All of the great functionality that makes JIRA Service Desk the premier service management system (customizable request types, queues, connection to a knowledge base, etc.) without the need for creating customized fields, workflows or screens

ProForma can transform how your teams do business by making the functionality JIRA Service Desk easily available for any team. Come check out our template library of some of the most common business processes.